I started this post with the Starcraft campaign example, and then as I kept writing, was thinking that I might have to backtrack and get rid of SC completely.

To be fair, the campaign is very contrived, but in most 1v1s, I feel like strong opinions were the way to go, with the “unwanted adjustments” you talked about, like waiting a few seconds longer to take your natural after your opponent’s scout leaves. It’s also why after many thousands of games, I sort of lost interest in Starcraft. Based on maps and matchups, besides cheese, most games played out with both players just executing their predetermined builds until one player made a mistake (the game breaks down to balancing economy, army size, tech and army positioning, so a miscalculation along any of those axes). I did enjoy some of the ICCup seasons with new maps before people figured out optimal builds where it wasn’t as repetitive. But mostly I stopped playing cuz of all the long drawn out PvTs :)